iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Temporarily a four-piece. Still great.

A stripped-down version of The New Pornographers at The Cannery in Nashville

091

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Think I might read Stoner soon. People seem to like it.

Cover of the NYRB edition of Stoner, the 1965 novel by John Williams.

491

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Was very happy to beam into QUB today to launch the Africans in Ireland website that I and a number of colleagues have been working on for years. Maps, database, & other resources documenting the African presence in Ireland from the late 16th to early 20th centuries. africansinireland.com

A right-facing silhouette of the Black preacher and seaman John Jea, Methodist preacher and seaman, from his 1816 book The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher

1015263

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I'm being told that until the mid-18th century many people believed there were dragons living in the Alps.

Dragon of the Wangserberg, Sargans region, Graubünden. Engraving published in 1723 in the Ouresiphoites Helveticus, Sive Itinera per Helvetiae Alpinas Regiones by Johann Jacob Scheuchzer. A man in period dress is being startled in a wooded glade by a long-necked dragon with the face of a cat and the abs of an Olympic runner. Source: The Fine Alpine Coast website, https://www.thomascrauwels.ch/en/blog/histoire-de-la-montagne-xviiieme-siecle/?srsltid=AfmBOopuhawSis7Vf1gJPvte_poxcW14Rm7TT77d4C03MdA5SIABnq6o

4181

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Started reading this before I realized this is Women in Translation Month. Much more fun than the title would lead you to expect. #WITMonth

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Fitzcarraldo edition

3212

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

How I spent my birthday week.

Sign welcoming attendees to the Dickens Universe at the University of California Santa Cruz. Behind the sign are a bunch of very tall redwoods.

2160

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Sometimes you come up with a really good title, and the rest of the book writes itself.

A yellow book in a store in East Tennessee titled Yellow Jackets! (and why I hate them), by Arthur J. Stewart

180

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I performed parts of this in high school, which led me to more Beckett, which led me to Joyce, which led me to study in Dublin, which led me to get a PhD in Irish history, which... etc And the thing about starting out with Godot is that I've never shaken the feeling that all of the above is futile.

3333

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Spotted in a Nashville recording studio.

A wall in a Nashville recording studio with a yellow telephone attached to it and the words "For a good time call Jenny 867-5309" written beside it.

030

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Fellow authors: without any (or very much) context, what's the first line of your current WIP?

The Last Symphony of Nicodemo Nash
Cantus Firmus: Sir Nicodemo Nash, day 17 of his confinement, morning

I’d be happier if there were a window in here.

030

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

33 1/3 books are currently 30% off (not 33.33%, sadly). Pick up one or two (or 33), if you're so minded. For example: www.bloomsbury.com/us/john-cale...

Product page for my book on John Cale's Paris 1919. Current paperback price is $10.46

1187

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Catch BPB in a tiny divey club if ever you get the chance.

Will Oldham and his band on stage at The End in Nashville, Tennessee.

160

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Anyone want some strawberries? We got a little carried away.

A box containing roughly 10 pounds of strawberries.

41204

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

The teen had a birthday today.

A cake with a printed frosting design showing My Chemical Romance in their Black Parade era wearing festive conical party hats.

050

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The theme of the night was polka dots.

Robyn Hitchcock with a polka-dotted guitar named the Tubbycaster. Emma Swift in a polka-dotted dress.

1110

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Just another Wednesday evening and I'm finding myself enchanted by this 1738 statue of Handel trying to work from home while daycare's closed. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O34256/...

From the V&A description: Statue, marble. Handel is seated cross-legged and leaning to his right, playing a lyre. His left elbow rests on a pile of bound scores of his works, titled ALEX FEAST, OPERAS, ORAS and LESSONS. He wears informal contemporary dress, a soft cap, a long shirt open at the neck and buttoned to below the waist, loose breeches, stockings and slippers, one of which has been discarded and lies beneath his right foot. He has also a full loose gown, covering the seat and falling to the ground on either side of his legs. At his feet on his left is seated a putto, who is inscribing the notes Handel plays on paper propped against a viol, while to the left on the base are a flute and an oboe.

28213

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

After years of fruitless luring, we finally have bluebirds in the yard.

0220

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

One Tweetle Beetle Bottle Puddle Paddle Battle After Another

Illustration from Fox in Sox, by Doctor Seuss, showing four tweetle beetles bettling one another with paddles in a puddle in a bottle.

2162

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Qutb Minar with airplane, a few days ago

231

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Lodhi Gardens, Delhi, yesterday morning

A domed 15th/16th-century structure built by the Lodhi Sultanate in Delhi. It's misty and there are yellow flowers and a boy playing cricket.

3231

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Spring Break was a little different this year.

A tuk-tuk driving along Janpath in New Delhi, the dome of the Rashtaprati Bhavan (presidential palace) can be seen in the distance.

1161

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Spent the week immersed in @stuhennigan.bsky.social's crackling fizzling merry-walloping novel Keshed and holy moses, if you like a book that grabs you by the arm & spins you around & boots you down the stairs & chases you down the street (in a good way!) you really must read this. It's tremendous.

3157

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Liverpool, 1865 - It's getting so you can't even steal a sword from a Fenian and show passersby how to use it without being fined 5 shillings and costs. --Liverpool Mercury, December 7 1865

A FENIAN'S SWORD.--A man named William Hobbs, described as a "loafer," was brought up on the charge of being drunk and disorderly in Great Homer-street on the previous evening. He was brandishing a naked sword from a Fenian for the purpose of preventing him doing any harm with it. He (the prisoner) was only showing the people in the street the way to use a sword, and was going through "the sword exercise." He did not intend to hurt any one. He now made a similar statement, and was fined 5 shillings and costs for being drunk.

170

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

This. Interesting (& timely) study of design in the service of totalitarianism.

Stalin's Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow, by Deyan Sujuc

020

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Now's a good time to cancel that Prime membership. www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/wp-content/u...

Amazon: Stop Powering ICE’s Deportation Machine
Amazon Web Services is a prime driver of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) incarceration and deportation
regime by providing ICE with a host of data storage services. Along with other major tech corporations, Amazon has built a
revolving door with the US government to entrench Silicon Valley's role in expanding the acceleration of ICE's surveillance,
data accumulation, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation of immigrants. ICE cannot wage its war against immigrants
without the critical infrastructure support provided by tech corporations like Amazon.

130

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

I've been told by a few people that bought this album in 1973 that my book about it did not ruin the album for them. www.bloomsbury.com/us/john-cale...

0190

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

This is giving me the strong urge to go buy a nice tailored suit and fedora.

I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons

192

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Happy Blackstar day to all who celebrate.

1261

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Greetings from East Nashville

A colorful sticker in a coffeeshop bathroom that says "Keep AI out of tattoos"

230

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

A Christmas walk in Western Mass.

Footprints on a snowy trail, a clump of hikers in the distance.

2211

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

A first step along the slippery slope toward Fraktur, no doubt.

The word Fraktur in the Fraktur font (the elaborate Germanic blackletter font favored by the Nazis until 1941).

1130

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

And in quite good company, I must say.

My essay, "The Consolations of Waterloo Sunsets," listed in the back of The Best American Essays 2025 alongside a bunch of other fabulous writers.

Cover of The Best American Essays 2025, edited by Jia Tolentino

030

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

I'm dead serious, btw. Just bought the two by Bruno Schulz.

The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz

140

Mark Doyle @markdoyle.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

I've just read one of the books from Philip Roth's short-lived (1976-83) series "Writers from the Other Europe" and now I need to collect them all. Mine was A Dreambook for Our Time by Konwicki. Stunning. Great overview of the series by @neglectedbooks.com here. neglectedbooks.com?p=7808